How can someone have such a terrible looking x-ray or MRI but not be experiencing symptoms that hypothetically should match it? Turns out that this is a very normal phenomenon. Imaging findings have less to do with pain presentations than you might guess.

Our pain thresholds are ever-changing, and we can measure them with something called the pain-pressure threshold or PPT. Mindfulness helps us to increase our PPT through the neuroplastic effects it has on the pain circuitry in the brain. There is a ton of research on mindfulness for chronic pain conditions in particular.